FRINGE 2016: Science, Love and Revolution

Through a mixture of spoken word poetry, dialects, saxophone solos, animal grunts, and an instrumental backing track, Science, Love and Revolution was most certainly a memorable performance.

Before the event began, David Lee Morgan chit-chatted with the audience for a fair amount of time, making soft self-deprecating comments and repeating the same question to the crowd multiple times just in case someone was hesitant to speak up, or had gestured to speak but he couldn’t quite see. All this to say, from the very start he was charming as hell.

The performance kicked off with a so-called “condensed history of the world”. Morgan hopped around the stage, spitting words faster than the audience could keep up with. The piece continued to move quickly. Between every poem he would physically step out of the spotlight in order to introduce the next piece, sometimes with short metaphysical quips and tributes to late revolutionary heroes, other times with personal anecdotes and confessions. Rather than a performance, this show felt like a conversation.

Another poem that stuck out to me explored the idea of God as an extension of a human imaginer. Starting with examples of all the ways God can express his love, to the vile hatred he is capable of inflicting, Morgan asked the audience “isn’t this how a wounded God would love?” Going on to say that, essentially, we are God, and we are far from perfect, a theme he continued to return to.

This theme returned in his last poem, my personal favorite. He prefaced it by critiquing the oft-referenced advice of “write what you know”, suggesting one should include their ideals as a--perhaps still unrealized--part of themself. This poem stressed Morgan’s ideals and beliefs, including, most importantly, empathy as the core of any true revolutionary action.

Everything you need to know about Science, Love and Revolution can be summed up in three words: empathetic, heartfelt, and kind. Although a spoken word performance, this piece actually served as a nice reminder that although language is the foundation of virtually every theatre performance (not to mention most of human interactions in general) words aren’t actually everything—actions steeped in empathy are.

Science, Love and Revolution played at le MAI, located at 3680 Jeanne-Mance throughout the 2016 Festival. If you missed it, you can catch what David Lee Morgan is working on outside the Fringe. And if you've seen it, continue to buzz it and support it!

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Sonja Hanson is part of CJLO’s Official Fringe Team covering the sights and sounds from the 2016 St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival. She also hosts Behind The Counter every Thursday morning from 11am – Noon, only on 1690AM in Montreal and online at CJLO.com.